The Man Poem by Mehreen Mujeeb

The walls of his town
Are composed with charcoal
The artist draws
When the day is dark

Images imprinted in his psychology
He shades in the walls
Sometimes he smudges them to a blur
He sometimes scrapes the varnish off

His fingers turned black
Once when he drew with pain
The wall told a story of blood fists
When he blamed himself for other’s wrongs

His drum skins tore
His heart was beaten by broken sticks
I saw the charcoal drawing of his mind
On the wall he longed to fix

He is the charcoal stick
Whose beauty I can't deny.